We really wanted to put something back

Sarah Parish and husband James Murray have taken the heartbreak of losing their eight-month-old daughter and tried to channel it into something positive

There are members of the acting profession who quite possibly never have any significant thoughts to clutter their heads unless it is put there by a decent writer. Then there is Sarah Parish. She was, by her own admission, something of a hedonist. But on her 40th birthday, she gave birth. Her daughter Ella-Jayne was born prematurely with a congenital heart defect, and after seemingly endless treatment, she died at the age of eight months in January 2009.
And this terrible blow set Parish’s life on an entirely new course. After a period of grieving, Parish and husband James Murray dedicated themselves to raising the millions of pounds needed for a children’s intensive care unit for the South East of England, based at Southampton General Hospital, not far from their Hampshire home. And yes, before you say it, we know celebrities can “lend their name” to a cause, which essentially entails turning up for a few canapés and photo ops, but this is not what Parish has done.
With the help of Murray, a fellow actor who starred with Parish in Cutting It, she runs the appeal, and for the last several years has spent more time on that than she has on her acting career, which has seen her star in The Pillars of the Earth, Peak Practice, Hearts and Bones, Dr Who, Merlin, The Mistress and Broadchurch. Even the birth of a healthy daughter, Nell, has not dimmed the couple’s determination of the cause, whether it’s successfully lobbying the Chancellor or staying up late at night sending out email appeals.
“After such a traumatic experience we really wanted to put something back,” says Parish, 48, of her campaign with Murray, who is seven years her junior. “We took our time to grieve. People deal with grief in different ways.” For them it included a stint doing hard labour in an orphanage in Cambodia, which seemed more constructive than drinking themselves to death in a pub. And such positivity no doubt led to their campaign: “We are in a privileged position so we thought we should channel the grief to do something positive.”
Their grieving was helped by the rapid arrival of a second daughter. “After the death of Ella-Jayne in the January we had a birth in the November. And that gave us somewhere to put our love.” She adds quickly: “Nell was not a replacement. We had wanted a big family but we have just one kid.”
Even one child takes much looking after. “A baby is all-consuming,” she agrees. Spookily, she gave birth in the same hospital room where she had Ella-Jayne. “It was chance. I was filming Pillars of the Earth and Nell wasn’t due until the following year. They said they would have to keep me in. I thought it was a returning nightmare. I was thinking ‘this can’t be happening again.’”
Squeamish readers look away now: “The placenta was not right and I was leaking placenta fluid. It was such a disaster, they just wanted her out. We started to prepare for all these terrible things happening again. It looked like I would lose my bladder and womb at they very least. When I ended up with a bladder, womb AND a baby I was the happiest mother alive.”
The birthing trauma was, naturally, primarily mum’s: but to stick up briefly for the father’s union, it must have been tough on James, too. “Absolutely,” Sarah says. “The first birth he was sitting watching the caesarean and saw what went wrong. The second he was alone in a room, not knowing if I was alive or if we had a child.”
It is to Parish’s credit that she acknowledges how little her earlier life prepared her for the trauma of loss. Living in Islington, she was enjoying the typical life of an actress about town. “We were totally unprepared. Actors have a sheltered life: picked up, fed, put on set to do a bit of acting, then taken home.
“Being thrown into this situation was a wake up call, which was good for us.” Wow: it takes strength to say that, for as wake up calls go, losing a child must be like having a thousand alarm clocks going off and a bucket of iced water in the face – and much, much more besides.
“I meet a lot of actors and I can’t help thinking now as I listen to them talking ‘you don’t half take a lot for granted’. We have since met people who have gone through the most terrible times.”
And this is what motivates her. So rather than turn up to a few red carpet events, Sarah lobbied MPs and eventually persuaded George Osborne, as Chancellor, to come up with half the money; she and her team have to find the other £2 million.
I ask if this could lead to a political career. “Absolutely not,” she almost splutters. “Working for the charity is all-consuming. We are small, we run it ourselves.”
Has this focus harmed her acting? “It has a little bit. I’ve taken smaller parts to be closer to home. But next year is going to be a busy acting year, and we are going to employ a few more people to free up more time.”
As for acting, she felt compelled to be in the hugely popular Broadchurch: “It’s so good – I just wanted to be part of it, and it was commutable from home.” What kind of roles would she like? “I love comedy, but I like change, variety. I have a super job, and am lucky enough to be busy.”
There was never much chance she would do anything but perform. Her mother was a dancer, her father an opera singer. To earn a crust both retrained, mum as a teacher, dad as an engineer, but they remained key players in the Yeovil Amateur Dramatics Society. The young Sarah found her home there: “Certainly I was part of it, I loved it, it was a big part of her childhood.” The desire to get up on that stage clearly runs through the family: her brother is in the band of PJ Harvey.
With the family, charity and acting, life is full on. I ask about hobbies and she laughs. “I don’t have time. It’s the charity. If I’m not acting I’m in the office. James is in the same position. We try to split our time as best we can, but we don’t have any free time. Occasionally I have a big old moan about it, but it is my choice.
“As I get older I would like to spend more time in the garden.” The couple’s garden at their Ovington home is, she says, “lovely.”
The partnership, at least, sounds a strong one. I remark that after a child tragedy the parental relationship can often fall apart. I recall interviewing the parents of Sarah Payne after that gruesome murder and afterwards walking back across cornfields which had lost their tranquillity and innocence: no marriage, I thought gloomily, could survive an assault of that savagery.
“We didn’t have that experience,” says Sarah. “Our scenario was very different. In that case a child was killed. We only knew our baby for eight months and if she had lived, her life would have been difficult. Those parents had Sarah for eight years.
“We stayed together. We had that shared time. The grief was horrible but the grief also held us together.” Losing a child, not through nature but through the madness or evil of a stranger, is, she suggests a whole different level: “It is asking of the other to give what they are incapable of giving, because they are grieving too badly too.”
But we move on to happier subjects. Nell is “quite grown up due to all the adults around her.” Parish reflects: “It was tempting after losing a child to wrap her up in cotton wool. But we decided to go the other way.” So a nanny and aunts and uncles all share in the upbringing. “She is great,” Sarah smiles. “We have a good ‘un.”
So why, finally, should readers donate to the charity. “If you have a child who is seriously ill throughout South Central England from East Sussex all the way round to Oxfordshire, this is where they will go. At the moment they will be treated with adults. Quite simply, what we want is that all the children in the South East have somewhere to be treated which is on a par with Great Ormond Street.”
And with Sarah Parish running the campaign, they are sure to get it, because she has heart.
To donate to the Murray Parish Trust and the #2MillionSteps campaign, please go to themurrayparishtrust.com/get-involved/

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